 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
 |
 |
|
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
|
|
|
Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Pluck of the playboy
By Eqbal AhmadThere have been dumb bells in the White House like Grover Cleveland, and crooks like Richard Nixon. And, of course, there have been brilliant and visionary men such as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D Roosevelt. But there was never anyone as tragically flawed as William Jefferson Clinton. Behind that ever-smiling boyish mask, he is two men in a single pair of pants. As the climax approaches, the two Clintons are battling hard to see who will come out on top. Yet, notwithstanding appearances and legal technicalities, both are set to lose, to a greater or lesser extent.
Bill is sexually obsessed, a deprived southern boy, out of control, craving less for love than naughty excitement. Scandal has stalked him ever since his other Jefferson Clinton self became president of the United States of America and 'emperor' of the world.
When Paula Jones haunted the White House, Clinton mobilised lawyers and advisers to exorcise her. So they did. But Bill's carnal instincts remained untamed, and he stole kisses and caresses with a homely intern half his age and less than half his wit. When the scandal came to light, Bill did his best to protect Clinton. He tried to reshape the evidence, banished his girl to the Department of Defence, sent tiny gifts and flaunted yellow ties to mollify his cast-off half-lover. But in America, as the Watergate scandal showed, once the media and congress get a peep into it, the personal flaws of a president are inexorably bared. For months now, the entire world has been watching -- shocked, amused, angered and awestruck -- as the unsavory drama unfolded. The stage is crowded with knaves and clowns. There is no hero. Nor is there really a villain, unless you count Kenneth Starr.
For of course it was the special counsel whose Republican ardour turned what should have been a discreet inquiry into a grand inquisition. The House of Representatives, made up of conservative Republicans who care more about private than public morals, relished the pursuit of Clinton on account of Bill's indulgences. They finally voted to impeach the president for "high crimes and misdemeanours", although it is not at all clear that petting and kissing and the dissimulating all the kisses is exactly what the founding fathers had in mind when they laid down those grim sounding grounds for impeachment.
The American people do not quite see it the Republican way. They are a pragmatic, generally non-partisan lot, who draw distinctions between the private failings and public performance of their leaders. Like all people everywhere, they use the state of the economy and of law and order as the criteria of government performance. On both counts, Clinton scores very highly indeed. He has rescued the American economy from the deadly grip of Reaganomics, and the people as a whole feel more secure today than they did ten years ago.
So his job approval rating has remained consistently high in the public opinion polls. The latest, conducted just before the Senate hearing began, gave Clinton 69 per cent job approval, while only 24 per cent regard Bill as trustworthy. It was against the backdrop of these unprecedented ratings, both in the absolute and relative to one another, that Capitol Hill became on 21 January the site of a surreal drama never before witnessed in the history of Washington, DC.
First up before the Senate the president's lawyer Charles Ruff argued the case against impeachment. He was timidly confessional about Bill's affair with Monica Lewinsky and the effort to conceal it, and admitted that it 'debased' the highest office in the land. But Ruff's defense of Clinton was aggressive and, to my mind, constitutionally sound. The good lawyer spoke forcefully from his wheelchair, most of the time staring away from, rather than at, the jury. It was as though Clinton had chosen him to convey his own condition to the Congress and the country: that he too is crippled and contrite, yet forceful and unyielding.
Later that evening Clinton inaugurated the split-stage section of the show. He appeared before all three branches of the government who were gathered on Capitol Hill to hear the president's State of the Union Message. He gave a virtuoso performance, eliciting 99 interruptions by applause in a 77-minute speech. He used the opportunity to announce a social programme that would engage the most anxious, most numerous and most vocal constituencies in the United States. He baited the conservative Republicans, challenging them no less than 39 times to get on with the business of social and economic legislation -- on the minimum wage, campaign reform, drug abuse, equal pay for men and women, investment in education, the rescue of Medicare and, above all, of the social security system, by investing a part of the insurance funds in the stock market.
There was something in it for everyone: women and the elderly, workers and students, bulls and bears. No wish list, either: he emphasised that for the first time in ages, the government's surpluses had grown to the extent they could support such programmes without incurring deficits.
"With our budget surplus growing", Clinton declared, "our economy expanding, our confidence rising, now is the time for this generation to meet our historic responsibility to the 21st century... Let us join together in saying to the American people, 'We shall save social security now.'"
Stirring stuff, indeed. And it will be some time before his opponents can refute this call to action. His approval ratings thus continue to climb even as the decision on impeachment nears. Lawyer Charles Ruff knew what was coming. Earlier in the day, he told the Senate at the televised hearing, "When the American people hear the president talk to Congress tonight, they will know the answer to the question, 'Neighbour, how stands the Union?' It stands strong, vibrant, free."
Thus Clinton has done all he could to overcome the liabilities of Bill. In his address, he did not once mention the impeachment process, yet in effect told the legislators who are trying him, "I have my priorities right, and so should you."
In the end Clinton would likely be acquitted. But is Bill likely to behave thereafter, and can a lame duck govern effectively?
There is in all the muck and confusion but one post-modern certainty. A lucrative industry will surely grow in America -- of airport novels and salacious stories of sex and power, films and television series, white humour and black humour -- from which Bill Clinton will not get even a fraction of the profits. Yet he will be stuck for ever with Monica Lewinsky. What price can capitalism exact for kissing and caressing! As Groucho Marx used to say "a good deed should never go unpunished."
